This post originally appeared at https://wisconsindailystar.com/news/wisconsin-sen-ron-johnson-and-gop-colleagues-urge-democrat-committee-chairmen-to-investigate-human-trafficking/sberry/2023/08/01/

Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R) led the Senate Republican conference in a letter to Senate Democrat committee chairmen urging them to hold hearings and investigate human trafficking, a press statement from Johnson’s office stated Monday.

The letter, sent to Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations; Richard Durbin (D-IL), who chairs the Committee on the Judiciary; Gary Peters (D-MI), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations, urges increased oversight and investigations into human trafficking.

Recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data concerning the humanitarian crisis at the border, including a graph that reveals the rise in encounters of those illegally crossing the southwest border, are highlighted in the letter.

“[S]ince the start of the Biden Administration, over 5.6 million have been encountered illegally crossing the southwest border,” the letter states. “In addition, there have been approximately 1.5 million known and unknown ‘got aways.’ The Biden Administration’s open border policy is facilitating the multi-billion dollar business model of some of the most evil people on the planet – drug, human, and sex traffickers.”

The Republican senators note that, in fiscal year 2022, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “reported over 2.3 million encounters at the southwest border, including 152,057 encounters of unaccompanied and single minors.”

Over the first nine months of fiscal year 2023, the GOP senators report CBP has recorded “over 1.7 million encounters at the southwest border, including over 98,000 encounters of unaccompanied and single minors.”

“The New York Times reported that under this administration, HHS lost contact with more than 85,000 children who originally entered the country unaccompanied,” the letter observed.

Johnson presented the letter Thursday to Tim Ballard, the focus of the blockbuster crowd-funded film Sound of Freedom, which tells the story of the former government agent’s efforts to rescue a little girl from sex traffickers in the Columbian jungle.

Ballard, who is played in the film by actor Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ), ultimately created Operation Underground Railroad, an organization that rescued over 120 victims – including some children as young as 11 years old – during just one mission.

Eduardo Verastegui, Sound of Freedom’s Mexican producer, shared recently in a podcast interview at Timcast IRL that, after hearing Ballard’s story, he decided to produce a film that could “start a movement” to end child trafficking.

In their letter, the Republican senators note that, under their leadership, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations “led a years-long investigation into online sex trafficking occurring on Backpage.com, which the National Association of Attorneys General described as a ‘hub’ of human trafficking.”

As former chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Johnson, the letter asserts, “held more than 30 hearings and roundtables on border security, including human trafficking.”

The film Sound of Freedom, the GOP senators write, “has played an important role in creating public awareness of this modern-day form of slavery.”

“[W]e urge you to investigate and hold hearings into DHS’s efforts to combat human trafficking,” they conclude. “Without our attention and leadership, human trafficking will continue to plague this country.”

U.S. Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) announced Friday he is planning to introduce legislation, drafted in collaboration with Sound of Freedom producer Verastegui and Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation, that would require the federal government to provide reports on its efforts to investigate suspicion of child trafficking related to the unaccompanied minors released from federal custody and with whom contact has now been lost.

Last week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted a screening of Sound of Freedom to which members of Congress of both parties were invited, but, as conservative author and host Mark Levin observed, “not a single Democrat congressman” attended the showing.

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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to sberryphd@protonmail.com.
Photo “Sen. Ron Johnson” by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson.

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